1397
Year 1397 was a common year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar.
Events
January–March
- January - Mircea I takes back the throne of Wallachia.
- February 10 - John Beaufort becomes Earl of Somerset in England.
- March 18 - The Duchy of Milan, led by Gian Galeazzo Visconti, declares war against the Republic of Florence, led by Chancellor Coluccio Salutati, on the Italian peninsula.
April–June
- April 20 - At Kalaburagi in the Bahmani Kingdom Ghiyath-ad-din Shah becomes the new Shah upon the death of his father, Mohammed Shah II.
- May 17 - Callistus II Xanthopoulos becomes the new Patriarch to lead the Eastern Orthodox Church after the death of the previous Patriarch Antony IV.
- June 14 - Shams-ud-Din Shah becomes the new Shah of the the Bahmani Kingdom upon the death of his brother, Ghiyath-ad-din Shah.
- June 17 - Eric of Pomerania is crowned in Kalmar as ruler of the Kalmar Union, a personal union of the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden engineered by Queen Margaret I of Denmark, his great-aunt and adoptive mother, who retains de facto power in the realm.
July–December
- July 12 - King Richard II of England orders the arrest of members of a group of powerful barons known as the Lords Appellant, including Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester and Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel. Gloucester is murdered while under house arrest on September 9 and Arundel is behaded on September 21.
- August 28 - As part of a division of the state of Holstein, the northernmost member of the Holy Roman Empire, between Count Albert II and his brother Count Gerhard VI and the Ghibellines in the fighting between the two nations.
Date unknown
- The Ottomans capture the town of Vidin, the capital of the Tsardom of Vidin, the only remaining independent Bulgarian state. Emperor Ivan Sratsimir of Vidin is taken prisoner by early this year and later disappears while his son Constantine II becomes Emperor in his place.
- Temür Qutlugh is crowned as the Khan of Golden Horde with the help of general Edigu, although Edigu continues to hold the real power.
- The Università, a form of local government, is established in Malta.
- The Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery is founded in northwestern Russia.
- The Sretensky Monastery is founded in Moscow.
- The first hospital in al-Andalus is created, at Granada.
- Neuhausergasse 4, the brewer of Spaten, is listed on the register of Munich breweries.
- Gregory of Tatev writes the Book of Questions, a ten-volume encyclopedic work, at the Tatev Monastery, in Armenia.